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Fox News, NBC, and CNN have called the U.S. election for incumbent Barack Obama. Of the so-called 'battleground states,' Obama carried Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire, which, along with all of the solidly Democrat-leaning states, was enough to push him beyond the 270 required for victory. You can check this chart to see the full list of states that have currently been called, and by which news networks. The NY Times has an excellent interactive map showing all election results updated in real time, as does CNN. It's currently projected that the Republicans will retain control of the House of Representatives, and the Democrats will retain control of the Senate.

Ok, honestly, I wish people could try to be a little less partisan. Both men were good men and would try to serve this country. Sure they both have selfish motivations for some of the things they do but, seriously, who the hell wouldn't in that position???.
Let's all agree that, though Obama may do things differently than you personally think he should, he's going to lead America as best he can.
I'm generally conservative/libertarian in my politics and most of my friends align in that direction. I infrequently use Facebook and when I looked this morning I was disgusted with the ridiculous epithets and flat out doucheiness of a LOT of people who call themselves "Christians" or at least moral people.
Obama is a good man. I would lead a bit differently than I but he's NOT a "Baby Killer", the "Antichrist", the "Nigger in the White House", or any other hateful and decidedly unchristian thing so many morally ugly people are saying about him.
He's your president. He's your supreme leader. He's under tremendous pressure and stress to serve America and her interests. Speak of him that way or shut the hell up.

Please mod the parent up. I remember back during the Clinton days in a red state the amount of vitriol and extremely vile and vulgar things said about Clinton. Then in the Bush days, particularly in the second term, it happened all over again. Remember the stupid "miserable failure" campaign to manipulate Google's search? If I recall at the time many slashdotters thought it was pretty clever. Some people went so far as to claim Bush would hold onto power somehow (watch the same things will be said of Obama now).

Now again we see the same crap uttered by those who voted for the other team.

It's this behavior that's destroying America as much as any party or policy. It's time to stop it. No, just because the majority of Americans voted a different way then I did, it doesn't mean democracy has failed and the country is going to self-destruct. And no, just because the majority of Americans *did* vote the way I think they should have doesn't mean that those who didn't are somehow less important than I am.

Listen you fucking idiot, there was a plane. I personally know someone who watched it go into the building with a bunch of his coworkers. The poor bastard was in tears when we talked later that day. Get your head out of your ass.

THIS, this right here, was why everyone on the right side of the aisle did a "Anybody but Romney!" song and dance for the entire primary, as they KNEW that Mittens for so damned spoiled and THOUGHT he was clever and just wouldn't STFU and instead his "Richie Rich" persona bled on through.

I knew the man was dead in the water before the primary even ended, when he did his "I'm a normal guy!" speech when he talked about having to go through late HS and early college with "a truly ugly car" and someone said "Uhhh...that "ugly car" was a BRAND NEW LUXURY CAR that rolled straight out of daddy's plant and into your garage Mittens" and that was when I knew this guy was DOA, when even his "I'm normal!" story ends up involving luxury cars handed out by daddy? Yeah they were fucked, the LAST thing you run in a bad economy is a Grey Puopon spoiled little rich kid.

What is truly scary is...this is it folks, this is the BEST the parties have to offer. Kinda sad isn't it? Man do we need a new system, something where we can have multiple parties like they have in EU, gotta be better than this "Coke VS Pepsi" races we have here.

First and foremost, my Christian faith gives me a perspective and security that I don’t think I would have otherwise: That I am loved. That, at the end of the day, God is in control—and my main responsibility is to love God with all of my heart, soul, and mind, and to love my neighbor as myself. Now, I don’t always live up to that standard, but it is a standard I am always pursuing.

My faith is also a great source of comfort to me. I’ve said before that my faith has grown as president. This office tends to make a person pray more; and as President Lincoln once said, "I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go."

Finally, I try to make sure that my faith informs how I live my life. As a husband, as a father, and as president, my faith helps me to keep my eyes on the prize and focus on what is good and truly important.

-- President Barack Obama

The allusions to Matthew 22:37-39 and Philippians 3:14 are what makes me believe his sincerity.

It is easy to look back now and say that they are both good people with the best interests of the country in mind, and that is probably true. But elections and candidates are not mirror images and there are not two equal sides; this election was Dreams From My Father versus No Apology. After John McCain corrected an audience member that called Obama an Arab, the response from the electorate was a net negative; Obama supporters were mad about the comment and McCain supporters were mad that he looked "weak." That was the exact moment that truth-telling became a liability in the eyes of political advisers and name-calling whisper campaigns came back into fashion.

This year, the Romney campaign decided that intellectual honesty and demonstrable facts are no longer important in presidential politics and almost managed to win the White House with that strategy. All politicians lie at times, to various degrees, often by omission, but the Romney campaign correctly observed that the resulting sound bites are a net positive, e.g., the first debate.

Neither man is Hitler, but during the post mortem, which will be all about demographic shifts, business cycles, and the "ground game," everyone will pretend not to notice Romney's flaming pants. Nixon would have been embarrassed by the GOP campaign this year (including all the talk about "legitimate" rape and the complete abandonment of science and observation.) And it's our fault because, over the next four years, we will let the Obama administration lie to us and equivocate over everything from regulatory reform to drone strikes while FOX News tries to drum up another faux scandal. People will put their partisan blinders back on and pretend that it's ok when "our guy" lies--and besides, Romney was so much worse.

I'm happy to see Obama back in office and I'm relieved that there won't be a republican in the White House to acquiesce to this bat-shit crazy House, but I don't buy the argument that Romney would have done a good job as president; he would have tried, but he is a self-obsessed moral relativist that is too comfortable with lying to be the figurehead of (what is still) the most powerful nation on Earth. He further damaged political discourse, further legitimized the fringe, ultra-right-wing of the party, and did nothing to discourage the hate-filled name calling to which you refer. Childish name-calling serves no purpose and denigrating the president just further polarizes the country, but lies are lies and we shouldn't be afraid to call Obama out on them and hold his administration accountable when they will inevitably start oozing from the White House.

I think Nixon would be saddened to see what his Southern Strategy has morphed into.

One thing is clear, the Republicans have to recognize now that they have a serious problem. Yes, they've still got the House, but so weak, fractured and dominated by fringe special interests is the Republican Party that they could not even push over a President mired in economic woes, and whose major policy initiative (Obamacare) is still distrusted by over half of Americans.

To Republicans I say this. You will hear Tea Party and social conservative types blame Nate Silver and the other pollsters, talking about media conspiracies and so forth. It's time to tell Donald Trump to form his own party, time to tell the Tea Party that they're influence has been purely malign, a tumor on the Republican Party that is forcing poor compromise candidates who are then further shackled by having to try to find some way of convincing Americans they aren't social Neanderthals while still maintaining the support of these social regressives. If you cannot purge the party of these types, or at least put them back under the stone from whence they came, you will be denied the Presidency again in 2016. You have to decide what core conservative values are, and if you cannot align them with the national mood, then you're going to come back disappointed.

Please tell me you're kidding. Mr. Romney has not denied bullying a classmate and shaving his head or transporting his dog on a vacation in a way most would consider abusive and was a professional corporate raider. While Mr. Obama is really not who I would prefer in office (I am a small-c conservative), Mr. Romney has shown a shocking lack of human decency in a variety of ways.

If anything, this election has shown that nearly half of the the United States is not just financially bankrupt but ethically bankrupt as well.

It astonishes me that this election was even close. As a small-l liberal, I don't have much higher opinion of Obama than you do. But Romney is a phoney even by the low standards we hold politicians to. Seriously, a 260,000,000aire putting on a flannel shirt and going to a steel works for a photo op telling the employees that he's one of them and feels their pain???

The only reason I can imagine the Republicans nominated him is in case anyone was paying so little attention in 2001-2008 that they still hadn't figured out that the Republican party is plutocratic rather than conservative.

In his defense, I suspect that the dog-on-roof thing was mere cluelessness rather than wickedness. He really comes across as a 13-year-old boy who never grew up.

They didn't vote for Romney, they voted republican and Romney was the name next to the (R). Even saying that they "voted" is kind of a stretch, it implies a decision with at least some consideration behind it. People have their favorite brands, and for some people that brand is republican.

That ship already sailed. The decision on Obamacare blew out all the constitutional limits on what the Federal Government can regulate, provided they disguise the penalty for non-compliance as a tax. Five to four, and the swing vote was Roberts, the chief justice, appointed by George W. Bush.

This has been coming since the Marijuana Tax Act and the Federal Firearms Act of 1934. But National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius made it explicit, putting the stake firmly through the heart of Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co.

The founding fathers.. bla bla bla... Maybe you should read some history about the Whiskey Rebellion and the original Aliens and Seditions act. It took a lot of yelling and screaming to get the bill of rights into the constitution. And it took another 75 years to abolish slavery. There was no absence of aristocracy amongst the founding fathers. Not a poor man in the bunch. The government still maintains sovereign immunity, amongst other perks none of us are permitted. I would wager that they would think we have far too much freedom.

Exactly. It occurred to me the other day: Did the Founding Fathers intend for there to be so many exceptions to the plainly written rules in the Constitution? I mean, take the 4th amendment. It says right there, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." I don't see the part where it says, "Except when we're crossing the border or getting on an airplane." So why is it that the DHS can treat us any old way they want to, just because we're crossing back into this country or traveling somewhere?

Exactly. It occurred to me the other day: Did the Founding Fathers intend for there to be so many exceptions to the plainly written rules in the Constitution? I mean, take the 4th amendment. It says right there, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." I don't see the part where it says, "Except when we're crossing the border or getting on an airplane." So why is it that the DHS can treat us any old way they want to, just because we're crossing back into this country or traveling somewhere?

This is just one example among many.

Unfortunately, they stuck that word "unreasonable" in there. All you have to do is assert reasonableness, and the whole thing goes away.

The only thing that differentiate America from the rest of the world is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The only two things that differentiate America from the rest of the world are the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and an almost fanatical devotion to the gun.

AMONGST THE THINGS that differentiate America from the rest of the world are the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, an almost fanatical devotion to the gun, and continued insistence on paying lipservice to the notion of personal freedoms while simultaneously supporting politicians who erode them.... oh sod it, I'll come in again!

Colorado and Washington passed marijuana legalization for recreational use. We gained a little more freedom in some states.I don’t even smoke pot or tobacco. But It's clear that prohibition does nothing but make criminals rich and overcrowd our jails with non-violent citizens.

The lower house represents each district, first past the post, but with run-off voting for 3rd party candidates. The upper house is elected based on the proportion of votes, with some number of seats per state.

The lower house represents the majority opinion, but everything they want to do must pass the upper house, who represent significant minorities across the entire population.

There's not really a problem with drone strikes. It's a tempest in a teapot. Reagan bombed Gadaghi in Libya as a PERSONAL attack.. Far more brazen.

Bush was doing the same thing... The military commanders like Republicans so they don't run their mouths. (Note they treated Clinton the same way)

Sure, he's targeting US Citizens... That are engaged in WAR against the USA on FOREIGN soil. Obama is following precedent... You don't twist the Constitution and invent secret courts... People plot war against the USA and you blow them up where they hide. A US flag don't save you. These targets are the definition of traitors... You stand with the enemy, get blowed up with the enemy... And yes... They might be gunning for you...

At lest we wouldn't still be stuck there a decade later. When Democrats go to war, they tend to strike surgically based on the advice of expert strategists who actually went to school to learn how to do these things. They don't tend to crow about mission accomplished before we've even gotten started.

LBJ just escalated a policy that had been set in place long before by Truman in '49. The presumption by Truman, then supported by Eisenhower, was that a domino effect of communist revolutions across Indochina could lead to a Trotskyite victory for communism over the long run (the so-called 'domino theory'). Going back to all the way '49 the United States sent 'advisors' and significant funds and weapons to French controlled Vietnam to sustain operations against communist guerrillas.

Thus, the foreign policy of the United States was to prevent a communist win by engaging in proxy wars rather than direct conflict. But the French lost control and pulled out, ultimately losing Algeria as well. The French gave up on colonialism as a result, but this left the United States to sustain cold war operations in Indochina. Eisenhower increased the 'advisor count' (special operations troops) as a result and Kennedy continued the policy until his assassination.

LBJ just escalated a longstanding policy supported by both Democrats and Republicans back when the country had a unified foreign policy across the parties. And you'll notice that contrary to his campaign pledge to 'end the Vietnam war', Nixon escalated as well. Who just happened to have been Eisenhower's Vice President.

Opposition to the Vietnam war in the Democratic Party in the late sixties and early seventies was only seen in a minority wing of the party that had little policy control at the top. By the time popular majorities opposed the war, Democrats then just rode the populist wave with anti-vietnam war rhetoric. But they had been staunch supporters of the policy from the start of the cold war. Just as had been Republicans.

Good reminder. I don't think people remember that anymore. When they didn't find any then the Bush administration suddenly found an interest in human rights or claiming to be champions of the oppressed or whatever other excuse for invasion they could muster up. Except the fact that Bush made us known as a torturing state made that kind of laughable.

Begpardon?? Clinton was the first and only President in several decades to leave the Office with a budget balance or surplus. Before him was Nixon, before him Eisenhower, and before him Truman. Obama begins his second term in the Oval Office after adding six point one Trillion Dollars to the deficit. More than doubling it in just four years from the previous eight!

As he should have; recessions are precisely the times when you need the government to step in and keep the evonomy moving, because the banks aren't adding liquidity and private citizens are busy digging themselves out of unemployment.

The unexcusable, fiscally irresponsible moves were made during the previous decade, where we racked up huge deficits in the middle of a market boom. 2001-2007 should have been a time of budget surpluses, where the country built up a rainy day fund to pay for the next market downcycle. Instead we gave the money away to trust fund rent-seekers like Romney, in the hopes that these "job creators" would trickle down jobs on the rest of us.

1- Because the majority of the current deficits of the last 4 years were due to the wars and the Bush tax cut. Thus, he is not responsible for their effects. He tried to stop both, but met with limited success. Further, another good portion of the deficits were due to reduced tax revenue and increased mandatory spending because of the recession that appeared before he took office. Gonna have deficits during a recession.

2- Federal discretionary spending, which is spending that isn't forced by some law requiring it, is flat or down for Obama's term.

3- He will continue the hard work of helping the country build growth and jobs, and no doubt continue reducing any spending he can while trying to get the Bush tax cuts cancelled.

When Obama took office, the deficit was over $1 trillion. Go talk to any economist and he will tell you that during a recession you should NEITHER reduce spending nor raise taxes. Otherwise you risk making things worse. And Greece is a perfect example of what happens when you try austerity during a downturn (the austerity made the downturn worse, so the revenues decreased right along with their reductions in spending). If you want to reduce the deficit then you have to reduce spending or raise taxes (or wait for the economy to get better to increase revenue). I have found it very ironic that Republicans keep screaming that we are going to be just like Greece, and then keep pushing for the policies that caused Greece's economy to collapse (austerity).

It is all relative. If Obama had come into office with a balanced budget, he would have been able to maintain a deficit of a few hundred billion dollars and still stimulated the economy. Instead, he had to tack on a few hundred billion onto the trillion dollar deficit. What is not fiscally responsible is living beyond our means and running up the debt when the economy is doing well ($5 trillion added to the debt 2000-2008). If you do that, then there is a LOT less flexibility to handle emergencies (and the 2008 financial crisis WAS an emergency) in the future.

Bush wasn't afraid of a quagmire. He respected the UN. The UN mandate only authorized us to eject Iraq from Kuwait, nothing more. So that's all he felt we could do. That was the reason he did not come to the defense of Iraqis rebelling against Saddam after the war. He didn't protect them until the UN authorized the no-fly zones over Northern and Southern Iraq.

Bush Jr. OTOH decided the UN was unimportant and invaded Iraq on his own.

We choose between the party that taxes us to subsidize farmers and hollywood, or the party that taxes us to subsidize banks and oil companies. You may claim there is a difference, but I don't see enough of one for it to matter.

Geez. Anyone can list some things that they don't like and both parties do. Do you seriously generalize that to no meaningful differences at all?

And there are also matters of degree. For example, I think Obama is a jerk (or criminal) for allowing the drone attacks to continue and even escalate, but at least he's not trying to rush is into a war with Iraq.

Your values may be very different from mind, but you can easily spot topics where the parties differ significantly, if you pay attention and think for yourself instead of joining in the knee-jerking.

They will both kill your for a dollar but the Democrats won't rape you first then skin you and steal your kids.

Read up on the antics Republicans went through to stop people from voting, 7 hour queues? There are countries just coming out of war that have this sorted better.

Even top economic newspapers said people should vote for Obama because Romney just lied to much and his economic policies made no sense.

People joke about choosing the lesser of two evils but that is still a difference. With a democrat, there is always a chance he will do something decent by accident. With a republican, that will NEVER ever happen.

The funny thing seems to be that Romney as Governor was pretty moderate but got persuaded/forced by the extremist to change his tune and it lost him the election. If you look at the states Romney won in, those are exactly the states no EU person should ever go to, redneck states all and you might think you are right-wing in the EU but you are NOTHING compared to a moderate Texan.

The republicans basically tried to win the election on abortion, gay rights and drugs. These are things the extremists care about but not if it is a choice between their job and something that doesn't affect them. Two states even voted for legal recreational drug use. This puts two American states miles ahead of the most liberal EU countries. That is... well... republican attitudes couldn't be father removed from the voter on the street.

Oh yeah, they also objected to Obama bailing out the car industry because you know, creating jobs, that is something that the voter really hates... and they seriously thought they had a chance in Ohio were Obama basically rebooted the economy?

That it is even so close shows that many Americans would cut of their nose to spite their face. "Oh I hate gays so much I will vote for the guy who hates my guts and thinks I am a leech and should go and die already."

No matter how bad things are under the democrats, the only certainty in the universe is that under the republicans it will be worse.

the first time, they swore that their goal was to ensure he was a 1-term president.

As the number of minorities increases, it will be interesting to see how the Republican party responds. There was a lot of chatter last night on the news networks about how Bush really mobilized the Latino vote, but Romney couldn't get any of it in this election.

Some predicted someone like Marco Rubio, Senator from Florida as a potential Republican candidate in 2016. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Republican party if the son of Cuban immigrants is their candidate for President. Either the party will evolve, or it will simply cease to be relevant in American politics.

You had a choice: http://www.jillstein.org/issues [jillstein.org]"FINANCIAL REFORM
* Break up the oversized banks that are "too big to fail," starting with Bank of America.
* Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.
* End bailouts for the financial elite and use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.
* Bring monetary policy under democratic control by prohibiting private banks from creating money, thus restoring government's Constitutional authority.
* Let pension funds be managed by boards controlled by workers, not corporate managers.
* Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.
* Require banks to use honest bookkeeping so that toxic assets cannot be hidden or sold to unsuspecting persons.
* Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.
* Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means nationalizing the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and placing them under a Federal Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.
* Establish federal, state, and municipal publicly-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities and focus on helping people, not enriching themselves."

But the election results, even filtered through the rose-colored lenses of Fox News, were not promising.

Michigan fell to Obama, and then so did Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Obama was holding his own in Florida and Virginia, and things were looking grim for Romney in Ohio. The ballroom was as quiet as a library as the audience listened to the Fox personalities on-screen.

''Romney would have to draw to an inside straight'' at this point, pronounced Brit Hume, who predicted ''an awful lot of recriminations.''

Romney had spent nearly two years, and hundreds of millions of dollars, trying to convince Americans that he wasn't an out-of-touch millionaire unconcerned about the little people --- that he was more than a caricature who liked to fire people, who didn't care about the very poor or the 47 percent who pay no income tax, who has friends who own NASCAR teams.

He very nearly achieved it: Polls showed him neck-and-neck with Obama in the campaignâ(TM)s closing days. But his final day in the race showed why he couldnâ(TM)t persuade enough working-class Americans that he spoke for them.

On election night in 2000, George W. Bush hosted an outdoor rally for thousands in Austin. In 2008, Barack Obama addressed a mass of humanity in Chicago's Grant Park.

The very location set the candidate and his well-heeled supporters apart from the masses: The gleaming convention center, built with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, is on a peninsula in the Boston harbor that was turned into an election-night fortress, with helicopters overhead, metal barricades and authorities searching vehicles. Only a few gawkers crossed the bridge from downtown to stand outside.

1. Declare a national holiday so all can vote on a day off to eliminate the lines.2. Get rid of the electoral college.3. Get Congress to override Citizen United.4. Take the money out of the electoral system.

1. Declare a national holiday so all can vote on a day off to eliminate the lines.2. Get rid of the electoral college.3. Get Congress to override Citizen United.4. Take the money out of the electoral system.

Funny, I'd put "educate the voting public" ahead of any of those.

Of course, it will never happen, since it suits both major parties perfectly well to keep the voters ignorant.

Romney could probably have gotten the Republican nomination fair-and-square, and if he had done it that way a bunch of people wouldn't have been alienated and abandoned the Republican party. Instead his people cheated blatantly and publicly and drove away, not just a few hundred thousand hardcore Ron Paul supporters, but a bunch of non-Paulite Rs. He lost FAR more than the margin by which he lost some key states in the general election.

The behavior of his people in the primary/caucus period proved they couldn't be trusted with government power. So they got what they deserved. And I'm proud to have been a part of it.

> Instead his people cheated blatantly and publicly and drove away, not just a few hundred thousand hardcore Ron Paul supporters, but a bunch of non-Paulite Rs. He lost FAR more than the margin by which he lost some key states in the general election.

He probably has lost Florida because of these shenanigans. Gary Johnson is getting more votes than the margin between Obama and Romney.

Not all of the Libertarians came from the Republican party, of course, but a lot of those were Ron Paul supporters that Romney drove out of the party.

I saw that too. McCain did multiple appearances on The Daily Show over the years. Before his nomination, he sounded sane and thinking and even justified some of the "maverick" label he had acquired. After he "won" the nomination, the money people of the RNC completely hosed him. They told him what to say, what to wear, what to eat, what to think, and none of it was him. It was some neocon wetdream that is such a tiny minority it continues to astonish me how much power they've acquired over the Republican party, at all levels.

We know where that power comes from, too: money. There are a few completely insane exceedingly rich people who basically control the Republican party lock, stock, and barrel, because of their money. They "donate", they call the shots. And they're NOT conservative. They're ridiculously regressive. Conservatives like to keep things more or less the way they are. That's the definition of the word. Don't rock the boat if the boat is floating and making progress. The people that control the Republican party are anything but conservative. They want to change everything, starting with Roe vs. Wade and working their way down a very long list that would push us back to as close to pre-Civil War society as makes no difference. Even further, in some cases, to pre-Revolutionary War. I swear their ultimate goal is to engender a literal American aristocracy, with themselves as the aristocrats. It's sick, and it's un-American, and they should be stopped.

I go away for like FIVE MINUTES to make popcorn, open a beer and settle in for a long night of watching pundits say whatever comes into their heads, and Obama wins it? I made enough popcorn to last UNTIL DECEMBER!

I go away for like FIVE MINUTES to make popcorn, open a beer and settle in for a long night of watching pundits say whatever comes into their heads, and Obama wins it? I made enough popcorn to last UNTIL DECEMBER!

If they can't beat Obama in this economy, with his results, they really need to stare at their navels and figure out why people hate them so much. They can start with GWB, one of the worst presidents in history, move on to what they think of rape, and then figure how much they need the religious nutjobs that forms their so called base. Their anti-science, anti-women BS is driving the country away from them.

I'll admit I voted for Rmoney. Not because I like that finger in the wind flip flopper, but I think Obama's policies are disastrous.

I'll admit I voted for Rmoney. Not because I like that finger in the wind flip flopper, but I think Obama's policies are disastrous.

Do you really think Romney's policies would have been less disastrous? Did you think that Romney would be able to shake off the control of nutjob right-wing Republicans as President? Or has that question not entered your consideration?
(I am honestly curious)

Mitts strategy was to rely on moderate Republicans (who vote for the party and what it ideally stands for, even if it falls short) and appease the far right, in an effort to push him over the line. Essentially playing the numbers game (Hey, it made him rich!).

The Republicans didn't bother trying to engage broader America. This is now proven to be a loser move (and demographics are against this). So: Is the Republican party going to move towards the centre or go further right? A reagan-esque war is about to happen in the GOP.

Mitts strategy was to rely on moderate Republicans (who vote for the party and what it ideally stands for, even if it falls short) and appease the far right, in an effort to push him over the line. Essentially playing the numbers game (Hey, it made him rich!).

The Republicans didn't bother trying to engage broader America. This is now proven to be a loser move (and demographics are against this). So: Is the Republican party going to move towards the centre or go further right? A reagan-esque war is about to happen in the GOP.

Mark my words in 2016, you will see Rick Santorum stand on stage with a few grayer hairs. He will claim Romney as to far the left and a radical socialist and communist just like OBL. He was rejected because he was too much of a Democrat and we need some far right wing libertarian reactionary like me to lead America!!

Then win and be shocked again! Then will be saying why are these dems winning! They all must be welfare recipients!... or something retarded bla bla bla.

The problem is the Tea Party. The Tea Party just kicked out popular Republican Luger (FYI is not a moderate) for a far right wing candidate. Gee, a democrat in this conservative district just won! Sigh...

Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, and Fox news mixed with the Tea Party makes up the Republican base. There is no moderate Nixon/Goldwater/Eisenhower GOP leaders of old left. Just angry ones who hate government and believe they are on a mandate to stop everything and cut taxes and regulation at all costs.

Maine and Washington (and possibly Maryland) legalized gay marriage. Minnesota had a referendum to ban it, results still inconclusive.Massachusetts, Washington and Arkansas (and probably Colorado) legalized marijuana. Montana "reformed medical marijuana". Oregon had a referendum to legalize, which failed.The Massachusetts assisted-suicide referendum is still undecided, but seems to have failed from early numbersFlorida rejected a referendum to limit "Obamacare" ("prevents penalties for not purchasing health care coverage in order to comply with federal health care reforms"), but Alabama approved a similar referendum. That will probably lead to the Supreme Court as a states-rights conflict.California had a referendum to ban the death penalty, which failed.

Finally, Puerto Rico had a referendum to decide whether to pursue statehood, leave the union, or to remain a non-state commonwealth. While this could be one of the biggest actual changes of the election, I can't find any results as of yet.

I am a solid liberal, but some of the finest times in my life is having a serious discussion with an intelligent conservative. But tonight, William F. Buckley is rolling over in his grave. The economy is weak. A shallow analysis says Obama should have been voted out. But you didn't deliver.

Because the Right in the U.S.A. has been taken over by shrill blind ideological fanatics and well, frankly, the stupid. So the only guy who could maneuver from the primaries, where the truly crackpot rightwing idiots held power, to the general elections, was an empty vapid lying suit like Romney.

The pendulum swings left and right in this country, your time will come again. But the only way you are going to get there, Republicans, is to use your brain. Stop pandering to the loud shrill dumb voices on the right. Cut them out, excise them, ignore them, marginalize them as they deserve, because they are a liability, not a strength. And thereby be a serious power again. Otherwise, you collapsed tonight, and you will continue to collapse, until you come to grips with the raging Randroids, hatemongers, and assorted narrow minded morons on your side of the fence.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of stupid moronic liberals as well.

But the difference is, they don't hold the power in the Democratic party for now.

Yours,one happy elated American liberal tonight

The path of lies, empty suits, vile sources of cash, and fearmongering was repudiated, soundly.

You know why they took over, right? When Obama won, the *only* fired up element in the Republican party was the extreme Right and we all know why that was. They called themselves the Tea Party under the guise that they wanted lower taxes, even though taxes are already historically low. When someone finally told them that, they decided they were the low debt party (ominously silent while the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were charged on Uncle Sam's card and ignoring the fact that the Bush tax cuts were creating trillions more in debt).

But, since they were the only ones fired up and everyone else in the Republican party was depressed (even mainstream guys like Tucker Carlson were starting to call themselves Libertarian to wash the stink of the Bush years off them). So, even though the Republicans treated their far right wing like the racist, slightly imbalanced uncle who came over once a year for Thanksgivings (polite nods and half-hearted chuckles at his jokes), they decided to give him the reigns.

And, when that happened, they got even MORE fired up. No more being forced to sit on the porch and watch the party from the outside. Now, they had access! And, the more access they got, the more fired up they got. They started winning elections, getting seats on committees, and soon built up enough power to start making demands! They weren't just coming over for Thanksgiving, now they had a room upstairs and their buddies were coming over every night to get wasted and talk about how much the hated that Mexican family across the street.

Now, the Republican party is stuck. They've given the extreme Right so much power and access that they're entrenched. You can't ask them to leave and they've been legitimized for so long you can't call them wrong. Nothing to do but ride it out and hope their rowdy parties don't burn your house down, before they get bored and decide to leave for good.

Congratulations to the real winners of last nights race: Nate Silver, Sam Wang, Intrade and all the other "Quants" (statisticians) who never characterized this election as "close" or a "tossup," but stuck to their Bayesian models predicting Obama as a heavy favorite. If their predictions were wrong, they would be looking for new jobs today, but the hiney hobbit pundits who characterized these brilliant nerds as "effeminate UnAmerican eggheads" will pathetically deflect responsibility for their own failed predictions this morning--but the nerds know the score. Science works bitches.

Not really. Two sources of data I user are electionprojection.com and electoral-vote.com. One is run by a liberal, the other by a conservative, but both are data driven based on several polling services. Both has Obama winning 303 electoral votes, Both sources have predicted correctly each state, and I see the possibility of two states going against their prediction (Florida, they predicted for Romney, Va they predicted for Obama). Based on the polls, this election has really been over for a couple months. So, only a media wanting a major even was predicting a long, drawn out affair.

Not sure whether I consider that a good thing or not; but at least somebody did something about the health care problems the USA has and maybe the conservatives will work a little bit with him now to improve it, rather than just chanting to repeal it like some kind of mantra.

No, the Republicans will spend the next four years obstructing anything and everything in order to make the government look dysfunctional and Obama look bad, just to improve their chances of winning next time.

Obama is leading by 8 points in Nevada and 4 points in Colorado, both with ~75% reporting. Even if he loses Ohio, that's still enough electoral votes to win.

He's also (slightly) ahead in Florida, with almost all of the remaining ballots coming from the Miami-Dade county, where Obama leads by 25 points. So even if he somehow loses Ohio and Colorado, he'd still get enough electoral votes to win.

Even Romney were to win Ohio, there's simply no way for him to win the presidency. The math just doesn't work. I agree the news networks were too quick to call this one, but they got it right all the same.

but not to make Obama look bad. They should obstruct his "agenda" because it is the wrong direction for the country.

Yes, it would be bad form for the country to
help veterans find jobs [washingtonpost.com]. I am sure every single one of the republicans that voted against this bill had also opposed the unfunded wars that created these veterans in the first place
Oh, wait...

The Republican leaders met the day Obama was inaugurated and declared that their only priority was to make him a 1-term president, and they did it by doing everything they could to poison the political process in America for four years straight. In the last few days, they openly said that people should vote for Romney because they will stop at nothing to block anything at all from happening under Obama.

But a Democrat somewhere once did something bad, so what the Republicans are doing is completely justified. And clearly Obama is being unreasonably partisan by refusing to give the Republicans every single thing they want.

Obama may not be perfect, but at least he doesn't wear magic underpants. I don't think america's reputation would recover if they handed control of their nuclear arsenal over to _that_ particular flavour of crazy.

Socialism? Are you kidding? Both major parties are sliding head-long into fascism, not socialism. Methinks you need to read up what socialism really is. Maybe you should actually read what Karl Marx said about capitalism. I think you'll be hard-pressed to disagree with his observations about capitalism, though he was dead wrong about what would happen because of it.

I think you'll have better mileage with the birther argument than the socialism one.

After World War 2, the USA convicted several Japanese soldiers of water boarding American and Allied prisoners of war. The US government hanged them for that crime.

US justice consistently ruled waterboarding a crime from the time of the Spanish-American War until this century. We have convicted foreign troops for doing it to ours, our own troops for doing it to foreigners, and even civilian law enforcement agents for doing it to criminals or suspected criminals.

But no one has the political courage to slap a President and Vice President in prison for it. We'll impeach a president for lying about an illicit blowjob, but not for authorizing war crimes.

This person does not speak for us. Harper is... uncomfortably far right for many Canadians. And yet still sits to the left of Obama on many issues. He only appears deranged and extreme compared to our regular variety of center-left or outright left politician.

Well, no, he is a little deranged all on his own. But still, we'll take him over damn near anyone you could send us in return. Should only be another election or two before his party collapses on itself and we can move on.

The electoral college is necessary to balance power between large and small states.

No it's not. That was never the purpose. The electoral college was needed for southern states to get some credit for slaves that they wouldn't get if there was a direct election of president. (See, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States) [wikipedia.org].) Besides that, the effect of the electoral college is to put the focus on a few swing states. No one cares about CA and TX and numerous other states because those states will reliably go for a particular side.

The electoral college is necessary to balance power between large and small states. Civics education in this country is going down the pooper.

I think you're confusing the Senate with the Electoral College. The distribution of electors by state within the electoral college is determined by each state's population. So no, it does not keep any kind of "balance" between large and small states. What it does is keep control of the federal government directly at the State level. The States get to choose who is President of the US, and thus they get to decide what method to use to represent the popular vote of their citizens. A couple states (Maine and Nebraska) are more "democratic" than others, in that they split their electoral votes by district, thus it is possible for some of the state's votes to go to one candidate, and some to go to another.

But the spirit of the electoral college is simply that of the union of separate States into a federal government. When is the last time you, personally, got to vote on ANYTHING to do with the federal government? Never. However, the representatives you elected for your state and congressional district do get to vote. The electoral college is in this same spirit, in that we "elect" individuals to represent us at the federal level.

So why is the electoral college separate from, say, the House of Representatives (IE why doesn't the house decide the president since we chose them to represent us already, and they are even allocated by population just like the electors)? To maintain proper separation of the 3 parts of our government. The electoral college is unique and independent of the legislative and judicial branches, as it should be to maintain balance of power.

Not that I'm an advocate of the electoral system as it stands, but I can see how the concept applies to a union of individual states. Personally, I'm tired of feeling that my vote doesn't count, because it was trumped by urban voters in a few areas of dense population 400 miles from where I live. They have different needs, concerns, demographics, etc, and are not representative of those who live in my region of the state, yet only their voice is heard when it comes to electing a president.